Columns, pieces and posts
The e-mail came from a reader, U.S. Marine Corps, retired: So, I was driving down I-20 from NE Columbia [S.C.] toward the city when I began to pass this huge convoy of Army trucks, Humvees, etc. The convoy was in the right lane. I was driving in the left. The convoy vehicles were loaded with […]
Katrina is a huge and historic story. The human cost, the financial cost, the rendering uninhabitable of a great and fabled American city—all of it amazing. A quick look at the good, the bad, and the let’s-shoot-them-now. The governors. Political leadership in times of crisis is a delicate thing. You have to be frank about […]
The federal government is doing something right now that is exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. It is forgetting to think dark. It is forgetting to imagine the unimaginable. Governments deal in data. People in government see a collection of data as something to be used, manipulated or ignored, but whatever they […]
Newt and Hillary pose on the Capitol steps showing a teasing delight in each other’s company as they back, together, a new health-care scheme. John McCain and Hillary pose laughing with reporters and showing bipartisan closeness as they leave together on a fact-finding trip to Alaska. I saw the latter picture yesterday on the news, […]
In New York right now the sun is soft, not searing; the humidity just high enough that you feel like you’re walking through pleasantly warm gelatin as you walk along the streets. A good time for a general political overview, I say. Let’s start with the Bushes. President Bush is under pressure from various parts […]
It’s summer, the country’s traveling, and the great pleasure to be had from leaving home is meeting and falling in love with a place you’ve never been to. I end that sentence with a preposition to segue into my favorite story this summer of cultural tensions and differences as navigated by two American women. A […]
What’s wrong with them? That’s what I’m thinking more and more as I watch the news from Washington. A few weeks ago it was the senators who announced the judicial compromise. There is nothing wrong with compromise and nothing wrong with announcements, but the senators who spoke referred to themselves with such flights of vanity […]
I have read the Hillary book by Ed Klein, which has been heavily dumped on by conservatives, and understandably. In terms of political impact it is not a takedown but a buildup. Dick Morris says its sensational charges will only “embolden” her. They will certainly tend to inoculate her against future and legitimate criticism and […]
You know what would be fun, and actually helpful? If in the latest struggle over funding for public television, people said what they know to be true. The argument, once again, is about whether PBS has a liberal bias. There are charges and countercharges, studies, specific instances cited of subtle partiality here and obvious side-taking […]
I don’t know that Democrats understand how Republicans experience the attacks Democratic leaders make on them. I’m not sure they know how they sound to us. In America there is a lot of political integration. Democrats and Republicans are friends. Life forces them to be if they need to be forced, which most don’t. They […]